Nikon D5000 Press Release Review

Right on Canon’s heels, where they’ve been for 6 of the past 7 years anyway, Nikon released a brand spanking new DSLR last week. To be honest, I don’t really get it. Looking at ye olde list o’ functions, the tilt and swivel LCD is pretty much the biggest change over it’s life partner, the D90. And it seems to be the only change for the better.

Before I go on, I would like to give Nikon a special medal for fucking with version numbers, even more than camera makers usually do. The scale goes something like this: D3, D700, D300, D90, D5000, D60. Canon has its shit messed up, with the Rebel thing, but at least I know that a small number means a more expensive/feature packed camera. With Nikon I need a little list or a photo nerd to tell me. Good thing there’s so many of them. Photo nerds, not lists.

When this little bad boy came out, I thought Nikon was following Canon’s lead, putting video into a low end body. Surprise, surprise, they didn’t. What they did was they took a D90, made it a bit smaller and lighter, put in a darker viewfinder, removed the AF motor so all the non-AF-S or AF-I lenses wouldn’t auto-focus, added a swivel LCD display – a shittier one than in the D90 mind you – then cut the MSRP by about $100. According to dpreview, that translates to a retail price difference of nothing dollars and zero cents.

I’d like to also thank dpreview for comparing the D60 with the D5000. A comparison between a camera that retails for $470 and one that’s sold for $850 is obviously the best one to make.

So, yeah, it only took a year for tilt-swivel LCD. Otherwise, check out the D90 press release review that I’ve never written.

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One Response

dpreview is just comparing it to a camera over which d5000 is clearly better, hence the d60. all i want is to replace my d200 with a d400 that has 1080p video, not because i have a use for video but because it’s too late to get a d300 after having waited this long.